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Dealing with marital monies, whether your own or kindly contributed, shouldn’t be like a visit from the IRS. Your father shouldn’t get out his green visor and tape-spewing calculator. A bride shouldn’t be stomping like a two year when she wants a gown she cannot afford. Getting hitched means starting, and in most cases, continuing your life together romantically, emotionally, spiritually and financially. Couples cannot ignore pending student loans, car payments or mortgages to throw a bash they have no business throwing.

Despite what many Accidental Bridezillas may think, you cannot buy a happy, perfect day. Couples can employ the best wedding planner, the finest caterer, the most excellent DJ, but any production will have flaws. Would you rather be uncomfortable playing a part in an overpriced show or be yourself in a genuine union? There will be mishaps in either wedding, but one is far less costly and likely to go wrong. In the guide The Everything Wedding Etiquette Book, Holly Lefevre says, “As a wedding planner, I have seen too many brides dwell on the what-ifs and doubt their choices amidst the din of others opinions. For these brides, planning a wedding became a source of anxiety, and all the time and money spent planning a beautiful day didn’t buy them the experience of really enjoying it.”

Un-planning your wedding is removing temptations that are being dangled in front of your face by the media, bridal industry and loved ones so you don’t become a bridezilla. Un-planning your wedding means removing the handmade wedding programs and the ordering of custom M&M’s from your to do list.

We occasionally help out a local rescue group by acting as foster parents to orphaned beagles. One of these temporary guests, Izzy, was a horribly nervous and neglected beagle. She had a disgusting behavior of eating her poop while it was still steaming. Gross. She lovingly passed this trait onto my non-poop eating dogs. Unless my husband and I want to smell fecal matter on their breath as we cuddle up for the night, we have to use a pooper scooper to remove the nasty snack before Foster or Gabbie start munching. We have to remove the temptation because no amount of reprimanding detours them. It is not easy to wake up at 6:00am and follow two dogs around the yard waiting for them to pop a squat when I could be in my warm bed, but making the sacrifice is worth it.

It may be challenging, but pick up your virtual poop scooper and remove the wedding temptations. Resist throwing that overpriced bridal magazine in your cart while going through the checkout line or clicking endless inspiration photos on a wedding website to kill your lunch hour. Over time these endless pictures and articles will leave a nasty taste in your mouth and before you know it you will be following the disturbing trends of others.

Your wedding is about a union and commitment to each other. Elaborate flower arrangements and expensive table linens may be tempting, but it will have no positive impact on your marriage. It is just a nasty habit picked up by brides throughout the decades.

Roseanne (Episode: First Cousin, Twice Removed 1993): Do you want to know why I didn’t want you to be a bridesmaid at my wedding? Because there wasn’t enough tangerine chiffon in the whole state of Illinois to make your dress.

The first step in becoming a Wedding Rebel is shedding your denial and accepting the fact that you have been trained to be a wedding zombie from the moment you held your first bridal Barbie™. Or maybe it was the first time you purchased that thick bridal magazine. Perhaps, even the first five hours you spent on a wedding website. Like the zombies in the horror films, evil lurks around every corner. Don’t let the pretty magazine model in the Vera Wang dress fool you. You do not have to spend your entire life savings on silk and tulle to have an amazing marriage celebration.

Perhaps one of the first documented wedding rebels, Dorothy Dix, illustrates this fact perfectly in her 1926 book, Her Book; Every Day Help for Every Day People. She boldly stated, “…by the time she is ten years old, the average girl has begun planning her wedding and deciding whether she will have a big church affair with ushers, flower girls and ring bearers and maids and matron of honor and bridesmaids and a white satin dress and a real lace veil, and all the other flub-dubs, or whether she will be married at home under floral canopy, with an admiring audience fenced off from her by white ribbons. Only to realize in this ten minute splurge she is ready to ruthlessly ruin her family and half kill herself. If she doesn’t get it, she goes through life feeling that she has missed her big moment.” Miss Dorothy predicted the birth of stressed, angry brides (aka, bridezillas) nearly ninety years ago! Pay heed to her tale as most engaged couples never recover from their denial. They deny reality and choose to remain ignorant. They see nothing wrong with decorating their reception hall to copy Hillary Duff’s wedding. They don’t even blink an eye when asked to spend thousands of dollars on a cake, invitations or wilting flowers.

“It will all be worth it in the end,” was a statement that made my jaw clench as a bride! However, I soon realized the enthusiastic, peppy gals who spewed this encouragement truly did believe all their hard work and planning was worth it, because they actually planned their dream wedding. That was the key difference between me and the bridal cheerleaders. My blood pressure would spike at that comment, because I knew I was planning a wedding that would leave me disappointed. Their dream weddings consisted of magnet Save the Dates, a strapless designer wedding dress, DJ playing the Electric Slide in a stuffy banquet hall, some atrocious color pattern (hot pink and lime green comes to mind), overpriced flowers, and no wedding would be complete without the greedy guests hovering around the open bar. While I envisioned autumn leaves, the Blue Ridge Mountains and my two furry beagle babies as the only guests in attendance. It is clear that today’s wedding has become an overpriced, large sized value meal saturated with commercialism, industry pressure and media hype. And the result is the same as eating the greasy fast food…it will leave you gassy and regretful.

Wedding Rebellion is based on my treacherous journey as a bride and will hopefully give couples the power to plan selfish nuptials. The modern wedding is too focused on pleasing and impressing the guests. This blog is about honoring the vows and cherishing the union instead. We will reflect on the history of bridal traditions, while sharing some wedding nightmares and shocking statistics along the way. Understanding the original intent of marriage traditions will hopefully clear your head of chair covers and registries. Hopefully reading this blog will give couples the strength to repel modern expectations and plan a wedding day that truly showcases the marriage.